Though added security measures have slowed the boarding process at our nation's airlines over the past several years, progress has been made in expediting the part of the check-in process that occurs before one arrives at his or her destination gate. For example, tickets can be purchased easily over the Internet and bar-coded boarding passes can be printed on the day of one's flight at any printer with Internet access. In addition, readily available self check-in machines in the airport terminal can be used by passengers to avoid waiting in line for their boarding passes.
To address the needs that arise in a different mode of travel, systems have also been recently proposed to streamline the car return process at car rental facilities. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,148 to Strong discloses an automated vehicle return system wherein status information of a rented vehicle can be automatically tracked during the rental period, transmitted to a selected destination computer upon driving the vehicle into a rental return area, and used by the destination computer to generate a bill for the rented vehicle. Electronic vehicle monitoring circuitry is tied to existing components within the vehicle to keep track of the status of the vehicle during the rental period. The status information includes miles driven, fuel level, pick up time, drop off time, wear and tear on the vehicle, and so on.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,693 to Benson, et al. discloses a radio frequency (RF) tagging system to monitor vehicles passing through an area access to one or more vehicle storage area(s). One or more of the vehicles stored in the storage area is equipped with an RF tag which has vehicle ID information about the vehicle stored in a tag memory contained on the tag. The tag communicates with a base station when entering or leaving the vehicle storage areas through the area accesses. A central and preferably one or more remote computers accesses status information that can include vehicle identification, customer, lot identification, time of day, and vehicle and lot status.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,040,435 discloses a system for data communication between a computer monitoring system on a vehicle and a remote terminal, which can be a hand-held operated wireless computer.